Bananas
by sparrow.marrow
Summary: 10/Rose crack!fic set near the beginning of Series 2. Rose is annoyed, the Doctor is a geek, general hilarity ensues.


Thank you to my lovely beta missprufrock over at lj. She is patient and kind and sometimes 'heckles me in the manner of a butch PE teacher' when I use words like 'gotten' or include too many boring adverbs (as is right and proper)

Bananas

Rose Tyler was seriously annoyed. She was cross, angry, vexed, and irritated. Wiping her hands on her apron, she left the TARDIS' kitchen and headed for the console room, making it a point to stomp the whole way there despite the fact that her feet were encased in her favourite pair of fuzzy pink slippers. It was hard work stomping angrily whilst wearing fuzzy pink slippers (embroidered with pink satin hearts) but Rose managed nicely.

"Doctor?" called Rose, stamping her way into the console room. There was no reply, so she stomped a little nearer, directing the angry sound of footfalls towards the hole in the TARDIS' floor. She rolled her eyes looking at the mess around her. He had pulled up the flooring again; coiled cables, tools, and clunky looking metal objects were strewn all over the place. Gingerly, she picked her way forward (trying her best to continue stomping) and peered down into the TARDIS' innards.

"Doctor?" She waited; one, two, three, seconds. No response. Rose tried again. "Doctor!"

Abruptly the Doctor popped out of the TARDIS floor, his brown hair even messier than usual, his purple paisley tie loose around his neck. Rose jumped back a little, startled at the sudden appearance of the Doctor's head, which was just level with her fuzzy pink slippers. "Doctor, did you…?"

"Oh, Rose! Hello!" the Doctor crowed, grinning up at her, his glasses sitting crooked on his nose, completely failing to take any notice of the annoyed look plastered across her face. Holding up a fist full of red and bright green wires in his hand, his eyes roved excitedly over all the spare parts littering the TARDIS floor. "I've been rewiring the trans-modulation circuitry… it's been quite a while, far too long actually. Probably since my fourth regeneration, and today I noticed a difference when we entered the Vortex…" Sparing a glance up at Rose, the Doctor broke off his technobabble, as he finally noticed her irritated expression.

"Well… it's not _too_ important, but…" the Doctor backtracked, a little baffled by the look on her face. Usually, Rose enjoyed him talking about mechanical things, she'd always said before that it was charming, if at times a little exasperating. Looking for a way to please her, he suddenly remembered what had got him so excited in the first place, "Oh, but you'll _love_ this, though…" He grinned at her and disappeared back underneath the floor.

Rose's original annoyance resurfaced as the Doctor once again vanished. She shook her head, to clear the momentary feelings of familiar amusement that had begun to creep up on her. It was often very hard to stay angry at the Doctor, especially when he was in one of his bouncy moods. "Doctor…" Rose said, trying to make her voice stern as she leaned over the hole in the floor. "Did you eat…?"

She nearly stumbled and fell backwards when his head suddenly appeared again, their noses almost colliding. Regaining her balance, she straightened up, and watched as the Doctor bounded upwards, emerging from below with his prizes. Rose noted that one of his trouser legs was hitched up, showing off an ample amount pale leg and rainbow coloured sock. In his right hand, he clutched an odd metal sphere set round with blinking bright blue lights. In his left hand he held a small brown paper bag, which he immediately proffered to her. "Jelly baby?" he asked, grinning from ear to ear.

"What?" Her eyes widened in surprise as the Doctor shook the little paper bag.

"Jelly babies! They're brilliant, I used to eat them all the time. I had almost forgotten! I must have stowed them down there in case of emergency," said the Doctor, shoving the brown bag into her hand.

Not really sure that she had any other choice; Rose opened the bag and looked inside at the pile of colourful jellies. She tentatively reached inside, and pulled out a red one.

"Strawberry! Excellent choice!" cried the Doctor, leaning forward on his toes in anticipation.

Rose popped the sweet into her mouth. It felt like trying to chew a rock; a slightly strawberry flavoured, lightly fungus-covered rock. "Doctor, how long… have these things been under there? They're a little bit… hard." She continued rolling the red stone around in her mouth.

The Doctor's grin faded. "Oh, I didn't think of that. They might be a little bit stale."

"How long?" asked Rose, wrinkling her nose, the sweet still in her mouth.

"Oh, I'd say only thirty odd years your time… But, ummm... maybe a couple of hundred years of mine?" The Doctor nervously ran a hand through his hair.

Rose spit out the sweet with astonishing speed, and watched with satisfaction, as the Doctor had to duck rather quickly to avoid being hit with the sticky red rock that 'a couple hundred years' ago had been a Jelly baby. The sweet bounced off the rotor and rebounded back down into the depths of the TARDIS.

"Oi! You nearly hit me with that! I might have been blinded by a flying sweet, covered in your saliva." The Doctor straightened up, a wide grin spreading across his face. "Would have made a good story though, would have had to get an eye patch! Imagine! Me! With an eye patch!"

Rose fought the urge to pick up the rubber mallet that was lying near her right foot and bonk him over the head. She glared at him for a moment, and he grinned back at her. Then the tension broke, like an elastic band and they both burst out laughing. Their laughter bounced and echoed off of the console room's domed walls. After a moment, Rose regained her composure and straightened up, holding the stitch in her side, her eyes watering slightly.

"Okay… Okay… Sorry, but here. Look at this," said the Doctor, still grinning and chuckling a little, peering at Rose from under his eyelashes like a mischievous child. Taking the bag from Rose's hand, he set it on the console and held up the blinking sphere.

"What is it?" asked Rose sceptically, curiosity getting the better of her even as she ran her tongue over her teeth, trying to clear the ancient sweet aftertaste.

"It's a game!" the Doctor cried. "Very popular on Earth around the turn of the 23rd century!"

"Why was it under the console?" asked Rose leaning over and peering into the open grating, searching for anymore surprises.

The Doctor shrugged. "Don't know. Must have rolled down there sometime. Good battery life though… it's still blinking! And look at this!" The Doctor turned the top of the sphere in one fluid motion and all of the lights turned from blue to yellow. "Now, the goal is to match the series of coloured lights with a series of movements. Over the course of the game the light sequences will speed up and alternate, and so will your movements." The Doctor beamed at her as he began to hop up and down one leg. The lights switched to green and the Doctor began to pat his head, flattening his hair in the process.

Rose watched for a few moments as the Doctor hopped, jumped, patted, and twirled faster and faster in correspondence to the twinkling lights, fighting the giggles that threatened to make her forget her original grievance with the Doctor. Setting her face in as stern an expression as she could manage, she said; "Doctor? Did you eat the last of the bananas?"

The Doctor faltered mid-hop as Rose's question reached him. "What…?" he began, but was cut off as a great plume of smoke exploded from the blinking sphere, which was now glowing red. Coughing, the Doctor waved the smoke away from his face.

"What was that?" Rose was slightly alarmed at all of the smoke and the game's ominous blinking red lights… "And what…" she asked giving a little sniff and wrinkling her nose, "Is that smell?"

"That is…" the Doctor coughed again and waved more of the smoke from his face. "That's what happens when you lose."

"You lost because you stopped hopping and it blew a bunch of smelly smoke in your face?" she asked incredulously.

The Doctor nodded, "The smoke is supposed to smell like whatever scent smells the worst to the player, but of course its more psychology then anything else… there's no way that a simple child's game could calculate all the various possibilities for each player and then choose the correct odour."

"Well it smells like something's burning." Rose sniffed the air again, eyeing the Doctor curiously. "Smells like sulphur and wood smoke and something else besides… something worse…"

"Well you should see what happens if you win," the Doctor said quickly changing the subject, setting the game on the console next to the bag of Jelly babies. He turned and fully looked at her for the first time since she had come into the console room. Her hair was pulled back into a lose ponytail, a few blonde strands had escaped to stick softly to her cheeks and trail across her shoulders. There was a smudge of flour on her right cheek, and another on her forearm. Besides that she was wearing a blue t-shirt, jeans, overly large pink fuzzy slippers (which always delighted the Doctor beyond reason), and he noted with amusement, his cooking apron. He had bought that particular apron years ago to annoy Ramona, and he hadn't seen it since. Rose must have dug it out of the wardrobe. He wondered briefly if he should tell her that is said 'Kiss the Cook' in Gallifreyan.

"Rose, have you been baking?" He grinned, coming to the only possible conclusion gleefully. Rose never baked. Well, Rose never baked any more, not after a particularly messy episode involving the TARDIS' blender, a batch of chocolate chip cookies, and the hem of her favourite hoodie.

Rose, a little grumpy about his obvious amusement did not deign to answer him. Instead, she repeated her previous question, "Did you eat the last of the bananas?"

"Yep," the Doctor replied, popping the 'p'.

"Why?"

"I don't know. They didn't taste very good at all. I have to tell you Rose, they were a little bit off. Too brown, too sticky, too sweet. Probably should have just chucked the whole lot."

"No, I didn't mean that. I meant; why did you eat them, when I asked you not to?"

"Oh," said the Doctor puzzled. "Did you ask me not to?"

"Yes, I asked you not to last week. When were trapped in that cellar."

"_Did_ you?"

"Yes."

"Well, I have to tell you, Rose, I was a bit preoccupied at that particular moment. Trying to think up an escape plan."

"You weren't trying to think up an escape plan at all! You were singing the entire score of CATS and playing with that yo-yo you found in your pocket!"

The Doctor placed a hand on his chest, feigning offence. "Is it my fault that I've been blessed with the ability to multi-task?"

"So if you can sing CATS, play with the yo-yo, and think up an escape plan all at the same time, why couldn't you remember not to eat the last of the bananas?" asked Rose, refusing to be sidetracked.

"I'm not God, Rose." The Doctor began to pout a little.

She snorted and rolled her eyes. "That's not what you told those poor people on Dolosus Five."

The Doctor stared at her wide-eyed. "Well, I had to tell them something! They were threatening to roast us on an open spit and have us for their ceremonial dinner!"

"You could at least say you're sorry."

"About pretending to be a god?"

"No, you prat! About the bananas!"

Rose's heart skipped a beat as the Doctor stepped closer to her, his dark eyes suddenly bright and captivating. She shivered as he ran his thumb across her cheek, wiping away the flour smudge. His mouth was tantalisingly close to her ear, his breath warm and heavy against the side of her face.

"Rose," he said softly. "I'm sorry that I ate the bananas." His nose skimmed against her jaw line, followed quickly by his lips. Something wild and bright began to burn in the pit of Rose's stomach. "What did you want with a bunch of rotten bananas anyway?" he murmured, his lips hovering over her throat.

Rose gulped. "Umm," she tried to remember through the golden haze that was beginning to cloud her vision. His hand was on the small of her back now, pressing her body gently towards his. She was very confused. This was new. New, new, new. New, new Doctor, new, new Rose. New, new, feeling of his breath on her neck and his hands creeping up the back of her shirt. Oh no. She was angry. She was angry at the new, new Doctor. Bananas! She was angry about the bananas. His breath was hot against her ear. Oh… why was she angry? "Because I was going to make banana bread for my mum," she burst out, her eyes popping open.

He froze, his body suddenly tense. "Your mum," he squeaked, his hand frozen on her back.

"Yeah, my mum," Rose replied, shifting a little, so that her mouth hovered over his ear. A smile spread across her face and she wrapped an arm around his neck, pulling him closer. "Remember? I told you yesterday that we're going by her place for tea today." The Doctor was silent, but she noticed his breath coming a little faster as she moved her own lips down to his neck.

Suddenly regaining his voice he whined, "But Rose, we live in a time machine. Today could be tomorrow, today could be next month, today could be never. We could wait twenty years to go and have tea with your mum, she'd never even know."

"Today is today," she said firmly, pulling away and looking him in the eye.

He pouted and nuzzled a little closer to her, his nose brushing her cheek. "Roooose," he wheedled.

"Nope," she said giving him a little shove backwards, breaking their embrace. "Today is today." She looked at him, her eyes twinkling with laughter. "And as for you Doctor, I'll tell you what you really are. You're not a God, or an Oncoming Storm, or even a Lonely Angel."

The Doctor shoved his hands in his trouser pockets, cocking his head, his expression smug. "What am I, then?"

"You sir - " she said, poking him in the chest with her finger, a huge grin on her face, "- are a tease." Laughing at the incredulous look on his face, Rose turned and swaggered out of the console room.


End file.
